Feliu Elias, a 20th century artist

 

Elias, Tools, 1935

This show, at MNAC (the National Museum of Catalonian Art), Barcelona, was a real revelation. Here was a painter and caricaturist who rather vociferously turned his back on the artistic movements of his time (he was painting in the first decades of the 20th century) yet convinces the viewer from the sheer force and energy of his works, both cartoons and paintings: all are executed with an intensity and immediacy. Remarkably, for his ‘serious’ painting, he manages to achieve this both with portraits as well as with still lifes. 

Still lifes

Let’s start with still-lifes: a genre where, you would think, every possible approach in a realistic style has already been done. Yet Elias succeeds by choosing the most mundane objects - alarm clocks, books and saucepans, yet invests them with a respect that captures your attention. You feel that depicting such objects with such care compels you to take the objects and their depiction seriously. A picture of fruit, or tools for interior decorating, becomes in some way intense.

Caricature

Elias, Antonio Gaudi

Yet Elias (working under the pseudonym “Apa”) can at the same time create wonderfully vivid caricatures. In these works he is not pulling any punches. It would appear from his rather feisty relations with his contemporaries that his uncompromising views extended to his conversations. Clearly, from his depiction of Gaudi, Elias was not a wholly committed convert to Gaudi’s vision. 

Portraits

Elias, portrait of his son, 1915

Remarkably, for an age where photography would appear to have removed all the need for a painted depiction, Elias proves us wrong and presents the ambition, and the innocence, of his children. Similarly, his portraits of his peers present the person in their public persona, how they would like to be seen:

Elias, portrait of Francesc Pujols, 1920 

The males are excellent, but unfortunately, his female nudes display exaggerated curves in a male-gaze style that makes them very dated.  

Finally, his depictions of individuals in a domestic or work setting is remarkably evocative. 

Elias, La Galeria, 1928

What was Elias’ aesthetic, his view of painting? It’s difficult to relate what he says to his own work. “Real painting doesn’t exist since Turner and the impressionists”, he stated, yet his work bears little or no sign of impressionism. He is disdainful of cubism and is always very representational. Yet with painting as sincere and powerful as this, who cares? 

On looking at some of the details, the realism is not quite photographic; you notice, for example in the still life of 1933, objects are not correctly in perspective. More interesting, the patten of the wood table surface seems to be slightly melting in the reflections of the objects placed on it. This is a very sophisticated realism: 

Elias, The Apples, 1943

Who was Elias?

How can this artist be at the same time intensely serious, highly political, and yet fully capable of caricature? He seems to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time at several points in his life. Arrested for offending the Spanish government in 1911, he fled to Paris, and was awarded by the French Government for his satirical cartoons in support of the Allies. In the 1930s, he fled Francoist Spain, first in 1937, then again in 1938, only to be sent to a concentration camp when the Germans take over France in 1939. Several of the late still lifes date from this period, when he must have been under the utmost stress: which makes all the more remarkable these works of intense calm and repose, perhaps only possible through art.